When someone learns I’m from Kentucky,
invariably they ask if I’m a…
horseback ridin
moonshine sluggin
fried chicken eatin
basketball watchin
coal minin
bourbon sippin
derby gamblin
barefoot walkin
kind of Kentuckian?
And I think “Lord Help Me”
for this is how I’ve been raised,
but I muster my thickest Southern syrup,
“Yes, Sir! In my hometown we even have
a water tower that says Y’all on it.
Bless your heart for askin.”
First word of a local headline: “Lexington”
Lexington, Kentucky, is my home town
The famous Lexington from the Revolutionary War is in Massachusetts
I’ve never been there, but I’ve been to Boston
They had a tea party there to protest taxation without representation
Which brings up a question I have had for several years:
Was this modern-day Tea Party claiming that there was no representation?
If so, how do they explain the races they won?
Just wondering
Didn’t spend much time on that prompt word, did I?
The dryer sits silent in efficient electric
reproach. It can’t be happiness,
this slow business of hanging sheets
on a cloudy day, one by one, untangling,
lifting, pinning in place, my bare shoulder
brushed by soft wet cotton, hanging them
knowing the brooding clouds may bring me soon
to gather them back. In the sudden sun and rising breeze
the sheets flap, illuminated. They relax their wrinkles.
drusy “love without direction is a cheap blanket”
You expect love to be real
solid, an armful of forever,
to keep you warm in the thin
blood years but by the time
you learn the other’s definition of love
is totally different from your own,
you find you are bankrupt, nothing
is left, nothing solid
to put you arms around,
and, no matter how you fold it
when you try to put it away,
it won’t fit back on the shelf.
Title quote from “Such Simple Love” from The Movie at the End of the World: Collected Poems, by Thomas McGrath
Every night
I used to wander round in circles
through the back parking lot behind the apartment
after smoking, letting my mind time-travel
I would perform an inebriated balancing act
on parking blocks
as the world passed me by
and the neighbors spilled their guts
inbetween puffs
I’d soak it all in
the noise, the ambulance sirens,
my neighbor’s shitty day, my friend’s stream of consciousness
I would walk down to the bar
that never could get it’s shit together
I’d pay cover, the band would be at the bar, their instruments left on stage
so I’d leave after a few bored drinks
to the bar across the street
which also never could get it’s shit together
where philosphy students
sitting under umbrellas at one in the morning
would discuss free will and all that jazz
on my way out
I would pass them
and fire some drunken drive-by words of wisdom
just ‘cus
I’d tell myself I was supporting the community
with my dollars and whiskey breath
that I got real lucky that time ’round
that I wouldn’t do or say that again, live and learn
somehow I possumed my way ’round at night
where others aren’t always so lucky
but there was something restless, about those nights
the need and fear of a good night out
to be owned by the story of the moment
a character in a graphic novel
where everyone is the main character
and the reality of free will is the laugh after the joke
E= mc²
Everybody everywhere
has seen Einstein’s equation.
Some can even tell you
what the letters and numbers stand for.
Very few people can intelligently discuss
the General Theory of Relativity
from which this seemingly simple
equation was generated. This disturbs me,
as do many other huge holes
in American public education.
Let’s ask the question, Why
did we need a General Theory?
The Special Theory
explained so much about space and speed
and mass and energy.
Obviously, since it took Einstein four years
of constant work, there was some major
phenomenon that the Special Theory
failed to account for.
Gravity.
That phenomenon was gravity.
Whose properties were explained
by the equations
of an earlier physicist, Maxwell.
When applied to gravity
the equations of the Special Theory
did not give the same answers as Maxwell’s.
After several failed attempts to modify
the Special Theory.
One day Einstein had the thought of the century,
no, of the millennium.
It came to him that if only he let time itself
be a variable all of the requirements to include
gravity into relativity could be reached.
All he had to do was write out the equations
and test them against Maxwell’s.
They fit perfectly.
The General Theory of Relativity was born.
A few years later
the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos
used the General Theory
to build atomic bombs, like Little Boy,
who, dropped from the Enola Gay
onto Hiroshima
detonated into nuclear fission
less than a kilogram of uranium–235.
Because the speed of light
is such a huge number, the m in mc²
may be tiny and the E is still, literally, astronomical.
Out of those few grams of uranium
came an explosion equivalent to
15 kilotons of TNT.
Hiroshima, and almost every human soul in it,
was annihilated.
This was not, by his own testament, Einstein’s
finest hour.
He wanted his work to be used exclusively
for peaceful endeavors, including putting a man on the moon,
of which he approved.
He was also fond of wearing a sweatshirt
bearing the words, Question Authority.
Lucid, the one-sided
conversation began
with admissions of crazy
irrationality.
What was being said
would make no sense
to anyone else
besides the speaker.
He had come to recognize
a cycle of life and death;
sight to touch to love to
sudden departure.
And every time he wanted
to reach out, apologize,
let’s meet again,
something please
the darkness would swallow his words
and all that felt real
gathered in his stomach
as he chased forgetting again.
It was that cycle
he was able to escape,
the last time
with his brain in tow.
Setting her down,
he took her hand
he’d come to know
so intimately.
“This won’t make sense,” he said
“but we only exist in dreams.
Tell me how
I can find you in the real world.”
She breathed
but her lips never moved.
His own construct,
of course she understood
and of course she was silent.
There were no words,
for if he knew the words
there’d be no question.
Her face grew static, fuzzy
and the world fell apart,
broken up
by morning sun
dragging rested mind
too far up
to go back down
to process darkness.
But the weight of the mem’ries
keeps him tied to bed sheets,
fabric of the only world
he’ll know her precious love.
If the sun wakes me then it’s Saturday
if it’s Saturday, then I’m crying
If I’m crying then I leave for a walk
If I leave for a walk I go to the Carnigie Center
If I walk to the Carnigie Center from home
then it’s 2012,
if it’s 2012 I haven’t met you.
If it’s 2012 then I have no regrets
If I had no regrets, where would I be now
I always leave pens out
Just in case
That way
When the sun shines in
Just so
The light refracts off the ceiling fan
And makes me see something
That is no longer there
And probably never was
